124
H. G. H. NELSON
tional Chinese rules of inheritance ensured the rapid redistribution of any accumulation of property. Estates could be created only by the injection of external capital derived from bureaucratic or commercial activity; and they were maintained by this device of incorporating them as collective holdings. Naturally enough, the ancestor in whose name an estate was incorporated was rarely, if ever, more remote than the father of the man who actually accumulated the land, so that no-one but his own and his brothers' sons and their descendants ever enjoyed the benefits of the property.
Even if estates were concentrated in the hands of local, and not absentee landlords, the capital which created them was derived from external sources: and it may well be that the Treaty Ports stimulated this form of land-concentration by providing opportunities for the accumulation of capital on a greater scale than had ever been known before. There is evidence that this has happened in the New Territories: local men who prospered in business activities in Hong Kong city returned to their homes and invested the proceeds in land. It would have been instructive if Potter had told us exactly how Tang Jui-t'ai, ancestor G in the diagram, was able to accumulate his property. (It is not clear from the book whether he used the schedules of holdings drawn up in respect of private property by the Hong Kong Government a few years after the lease of the N.T. in 1898 which provide a unique source of socio-economic information about its many villages and form a base for later enquiries).*
It is worth commenting, in passing, on another feature of the lineage's collective land-holdings, in which it is possible to see an exacerbation of the pre-existing situation. From Potter's description of the private benefits accruing to members of the corporation who are in a position to exploit their control of the land, it is quite clear that by far the majority of the benefits go to a small group of powerful men - political leaders and racketeers: and the poorer villagers, even if they know of this manipulation of property in which they, rightfully, have as good a share, can do little about it. Potter himself points out that this was probably always so, but that it is only recently that economic conditions — i.e. the enormous increase in land values and rents — have allowed such great profits to be made.
* These have been utilised by Göran Aijmer in his article between pp.74-81. Ed.
124
H. G. H. NELSON
tional Chinese rules of inheritance ensured the rapid redistribution of any accumulation of property. Estates could be created only by the injection of external capital derived from bureaucratic or commercial activity; and they were maintained by this device of incorporating them as collective holdings. Naturally enough, the ancestor in whose name an estate was incorporated was rarely, if ever, more remote than the father of the man who actually accumu- lated the land, so that no-one but his own and his brothers' sons and their descendants ever enjoyed the benefits of the property.
Even if estates were concentrated in the hands of local, and not absentee landlords, the capital which created them was derived from external sources: and it may well be that the Treaty Ports stimulated this form of land-concentration by providing oppor- tunities for the accumulation of capital on a greater scale than had ever been known before. There is evidence that this has happened in the New Territories: local men who prospered in business activities in Hong Kong city returned to their homes and invested the proceeds in land. It would have been instructive if Potter had told us exactly how Tang Jui-t'ai, ancestor G in the diagram, was able to accumulate his property. (It is not clear from the book whether he used the schedules of holdings drawn up in respect of private property by the Hong Kong Government a few years after the lease of the N.T. in 1898 which provide a unique source of socio-economic information about its many villages and form a base for later enquiries).*
It is worth commenting, in passing, on another feature of the lineage's collective land-holdings, in which it is possible to see an exacerbation of the pre-existing situation. From Potter's descrip- tion of the private benefits accruing to members of the corporation who are in a position to exploit their control of the land, it is quite clear that by far the majority of the benefits go to a small group of powerful men- political leaders and racketeers: and the poorer villagers, even if they know of this manipulation of property in which they, rightfully, have as good a share, can do little about it. Potter himself points out that this was probably always so,
but that it is only recently that economic conditions—i.e. the enorm- ous increase in land values and rents have allowed such great profits to be made.
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* These have been utilised by Göran Aijmer in his article between pp.74-81. Ed.
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